Tuesday, January 17, 2006

The 36 Hour Cashmere Sweater

Sunday night at the Webs Holiday Party Kathy gave me the yarn and pattern for this little cropped cardigan, Classic Elite Intrigue. Knit at 4 sts/6 rows per inch, quick and cute. It is very soft knitted up, and has just enough glitz to make it dressy without the overkill of some lurex laden novelty yarns. Did I mention it's CASHMERE?? She wanted it, if possible, by Thursday to take to TNNA which I of course take as the throwing of a gauntlet. Of COURSE I can have it done by Thursday! How, then, is it a 36 hour sweater? Well, this is New England, and the weather can change at the drop of a hat. Gene told me "bad weather" was coming. I took this as a second gauntlet and decided to finish and deliver the thing Tuesday instead of Thursday. I made it. I actually would have been done around noon but for a major setback. I started swatching after the party on Sunday and finished the sweater at 3:3pm this afternoon. The pattern calls for 6 hanks for the size small. I ran out of yarn midway through the sleeve cap shaping and had to make an emergency yarn run this morning for another skein. There was not enough in the six hanks to complete the project. My only other complaint was the large number of knots in one skein. One I can handle, but there were three in one hank of this stuff which considering it is a luxury fiber I do not expect.
Not much else is happening here lately. Girl got a cat. His name was Sol and he was at the Dakin Shelter. He's now called Mr Mel Gibson. He's a mere three years old to Hannah's 15. Hannah keeps throwing herself at him, the trampy old lady, and he ignores her (mumbles "Old hag!!" and walks away. ) Hannah gets her nose out of joint and pouts for hours. He does not come down stairs yet, but is learning that Owen is a foolish beast who means him no harm while Kioshi is to be avoided.
Aidan is here with BukBuk and Bear. He's staying the night, which is fun for Omie and Opie. Amusing for a while but I don't want to own one! Right now he and Girl and Opie are playing in the box the range came in...they've colored it all up with markers. Mommy stayed for a while yesterday when she picked him up and she got in on the fun as well. I don't know what we'll do when the box is covered with scrawl. Maybe buy another new appliance?? He loves the box. Tells everyone they have to hide with him, and draw pictures. He says no all the time now, constantly. A stream of no. "Do you want to watch Pooh?" "Nooooooo." as he's pushing the tape in the VCR. "Do you want juice?" "Nooo..." as he reaches for the cup. I remember this. I did not love it. But the negativity is counteracted by the discovery and awareness. Today we discussed animal sounds. We worked on the obscure animals other people skip, like turkey, llama, alpaca, goat and sheep (there is a difference there). We worked on saying "Bad Dog" when we burp, which is a really, really sad and sick family habit. We worked out the details of our new pc with Uncle Brendon so Aidan can have his own to use. He helped sweep and load the dishwasher and was very annoyed when I refused to do laundry. He helped with the 36 hour sweater by sitting on my feet watching Pooh. I am not sure what the Pooh fascination is, but we'll use it for days like these. Omie needs a sweater done by Tuesday afternoon...Aidan can watch a little Pooh! I love being a grandmother. You can do stuff like let them stick their hands in the masked potato and say it's sensory development. You can smile when they use their washable markers to write on your cordless phone, or finger paint your cabinets. It's all good. And you can use the formerly despised electronic babysitter for your own selfish purposes, like presenting your boss with a 36 hour cropped cardigan. CASHMERE cardigan!!

2 comments:

Persnickety Knitter said...

LOVE the sweater. It has just the right amt of sparkle. I'll have to check out that yarn -- oops, I mean after I use up more stash -- darn.

MelissaKnits said...

It is really adorable. And really a classy, LIGHTLY glitzy dressy little thing. Adorable. And there's colors. Meg says a blue and she saw a red, Kathy says also orange, black (this is charcoal), white...it's not on the shelf yet, just in the box.